Tag: Dean Baquet

Donald Trump’s attacks on the press are “out of control” and damaging “the civic life and debate of the country”, the editor of the New York Times said on Sunday. Dean Baquet was responding to a tweet in which the president attacked his main rival. Story on John Kelly isn’t true, just another hit job!” The Post story in question concerned the reportedly waning power of White House chief of staff John Kelly and what the paper called “recurring and escalating clashes [with] the president [that] trace the downward arc of Kelly’s eight months in the White House”. The Post said the story was based on “interviews with 16 administration officials, outside advisers and presidential confidants, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity”. The website cited “sources familiar with events” and quoted an unnamed “senior administration official” who played the story down. Trump has regularly complained about anonymously sourced press reports and books and attacked media targets including the Times, CNN and NBC. @WattersWorld.” Baquet said: “I think the press will keep doing what it does, but … if [Trump] creates a culture where Fox and Friends and Jesse Watters are regarded as serious journalism, and the New York Times and the Washington Post are not, he will have done longstanding, harmful effect on the country. But it’s out of control.” Regarding the Post’s story on Kelly, Baquet said “every one of those deeply reported inside stories about the White House from the Times or the Post have all been verified. And I will defend them on these principles and they will defend me on these principles.” Baquet was behind the New York Times’s decision to stop attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, an annual Washington event at which the press and the president exchange humorous barbs. Trump did not attend last year and the White House has indicated he will skip it again this year.